


giving up is not a crime (moving on when it's time)

by lifetimeoflaughter



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics)
Genre: Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Cassandra Cain Needs a Hug, Cassandra Cain is Black Bat, Dick Grayson Tries, Gen, Good Parent Crystal Brown, Stephanie Brown Needs a Hug, Stephanie Brown is Spoiler, Stephanie Brown-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29179413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifetimeoflaughter/pseuds/lifetimeoflaughter
Summary: He reaches out the coffee cup, gesturing for Steph to knock hers against his. The wave crashes to shore, the white surf breaking against the rocks.“To fresh starts,” he says, “may your life work out exactly like you want it to.”Stephanie Brown decides to leave Gotham City.
Relationships: Crystal Brown & Stephanie Brown, Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	giving up is not a crime (moving on when it's time)

**Author's Note:**

> things I need to clarify before you read this: I'm an artist first, not a writer. but sometimes, I write things because I have no other way of expressing them, and so this may not make the most sense or be accurate in any way shape or form, but I have been having a Week, and I produced this instead of having a meltdown. enjoy

The decision is not difficult.

A siren screams as a police car streaks by in a blaze of flashy red-and-blue, and the light from her third-floor window illuminates the cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. They stopped glowing ages ago; her mom had put them up when she was a kid, and Steph had never had the heart to take them down. 

Her week-old sheets smell faintly of detergent and sweat, the bunched-up fabric soft and worn in her fists from years and years of use. She counts the stars on her ceiling the same way she has every night since she was six and couldn’t get to sleep; the smallest ones first, then the next tier, and then the very largest ones that were scattered far and in-between. She takes a deep breath, the sound ghostly in her darkened room, and then she gets up.

The stars are the first things that come down. 

-

She visits her mom in rehab the next morning. In her left hand is a bunch of marigolds tied together in purple ribbon; Crystal Brown had always loved yellow. 

“Sweetheart,” says her mother, running her fingers gently over the petals. “You shouldn’t have.”

The day is warm, and the chiffon of the pink dress she’s wearing is rough on her fingertips. She pinches the fabric between finger and thumb and rolls it back and forth, back and forth, chewing on her lip.

“Sweetheart?” asks Crystal. The sun is streaming through the open window, strong rays of light that illuminate every last dust mote dancing in them. If Steph tries hard enough, she can pretend the room smells like sunlight and bright open spaces she’s never been to rather than cleaning liquid and artificial lavender, air that she’d actually want running through her veins. She takes a deep breath anyway.

“Mom,” she reaches for her mother’s hand, and she runs her thumb over her pronounced knuckles, drinking in every last detail of her mother’s face, “Mama. I...”

Crystal’s green eyes narrow in concern, her other hand setting the flowers down, coming to clasp both of Steph’s hands in hers. “Stephie. Whatever it is, whatever’s going on, please just-” she trails off, pleading. Her eyes are so, so green in the morning sunlight, and her brown hair looks like it’s been threaded with gold. Stephanie looks nothing like her. She really is her father’s daughter.

“I’m...I’m going ahead with the plan,” she manages to whisper. The particles in the sunlight spin in dizzying swirls in response to her admission. At the other end of the room, she hears a clock ticking.

Her mother just stares at her, and for a moment Stephanie can’t breathe. Then Crystal’s shoulders drop, and her hand comes up to cup Stephanie’s face, a tired-but-proud grin slowly spreading across her face. Her green eyes look so much sharper, so much more determined, the resolve behind them like carbon-infused steel. “Good,” says her mother, and Stephanie can hear the pride in her voice, “good.”

“I’m not selling the apartment just yet,” says Steph. “I need you to get better first, okay? Please, Mom. Once you’re out of here, we’re selling it, and you’re coming with me, yeah?”

Her mother’s gotten thin over the years. Every bone, every muscle under her pale skin shifts as she moves to grip Stephanie’s hand like a vice. “You should sell it. Use the extra cash to get yourself somewhere nice. I’m going to be here a while, Stephie.”

“You’re coming with me, Mom,” and her voice cracks on the last word and a dam somewhere inside her heart comes a-crumblin’ down. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“Oh, baby,” she hears, and then her mother’s spindly fingers wrap themselves around her wrist, pulling her in for a hug. She smells like her vanilla moisturizer, the same as she did when Steph was a kid. “You need a fresh start, honey. I’ll be fine - I swear, I’ve got a plan. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

She pulls away, hot tears tumbling down her face. “I don’t want a fresh start. I want you to come  _ with  _ me. That’s what the plan always was, Mom. You and me, against the world.” The teardrops land on her dress, making little splotches of strawberry against the soft pink of her skirt,

Her mother sighs, softly, resigned, a sad-sweet-sorry smile playing on her lips, reaching up to pet her hair. One shaking thumb wipes away a tear track. “Stephie. Listen to me. You are - you deserve a life I could never give you. You deserve the very best version of the world, honey, and you aren’t going to get it here. You took on so much as a kid, with your dad, and me, and I-” her mother’s breath shudders, and Steph is suddenly scared that she might fall apart right before her eyes, “-I could never give it to you. Let me give you this. Stop taking care of me, and start taking care of yourself, baby.”

Her mother’s eyes are shiny with unshed tears, shiny pools of pride and sorrow in equal measure that Steph knows she is mirroring with her own eyes. “I’ll be okay - if you figure out how to be okay too, okay?”

Stephanie can’t help it. She snorts, an ugly, funny sound superimposed against the quiet ticking of the clock in the background. Her mother smiles, and then they both burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” asks her mom, in-between chuckles. Stephanie shrugs and starts laughing all over again.

Before she leaves, she leans in for one last hug. Her mother’s heartbeat matches her own, strong and steady and marching on stately into the great unknown. “I love you, Mom,” she mumbles into her shoulder, eyes closed.

“I love you too, Steph.” 

-

Transferring universities is somehow the easiest part of this whole mess. Despite her vigilante lifestyle, her grades are both consistent and high-quality, her GPA never dipping below a solid 3.7. She’s a hard worker. She always has been, and it shows, when her application goes through.

No, transferring universities isn’t the problem. The problem is the scholarship that lets her  _ go _ to university. Her chipped purple polish gleams patchy in the blue light cast by the screen, the little streaks of light appearing and disappearing on her nails as she scrolls down the webpage, reading stipulations and clicking on links to forms that she knows will take her eons to fill out.

The scholarship given to her by the Wayne Foundation, the one designed to keep students  _ in _ Gotham, the one that would be both near-impossible to transfer and if, should the transfer go through, totally traceable, which makes her plans for a clean getaway near-impossible. 

Steph sighs, cracks her knuckles, and begins typing.

\- 

She wasn’t planning to bump into Dick Grayson at the Starbucks she stopped at between errands, but she doesn’t dismiss his waved-over invitation to join him at the little table he’s set up at either.

The sofa-chair thing she drops into is lower than she expects, and she misjudges the height by a fraction. Some of her latte splashes out of the little drinking slot and onto her pale purple hoodie. 

“Here, lemme get that for you,” says Dick, reaching over and handing her a tissue. It’s beige, coarse under her fingers when she scrubs at the stain on her hoodie. She hadn’t realized Starbucks was leaning into the whole ‘go green’ thing just yet.

Dick leans back into his chair, his elbows resting on an arm each. The sunlight glints off his watch as he locks his fingers together, head tilted like a bird as she tries in vain to remove the brown splotches. There is a shiny silver laptop open in front of him, surrounded by old-school paper files in manila folders. A paper cup of coffee as dark as his hair sits uncapped on the small table, steam curling lazily out of the dark liquid.

“So,” Steph places the tissue gingerly on a free spot of the table, “haven’t seen you in a while- at the Manor, I mean,” he clarifies, when she gives him a quizzical look. “How have you been? How’s college?”

She’s suddenly ultra-aware of the small hole in the knee of her leggings, the way the fabric is stretched and faded, and she suddenly feels very small. “College is...college,” she shrugs. “I’m just glad it’s summer now. Downtime, and all that.” She picks at the opening, fingers searching for a loose thread. Her other hand reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and when her eyes flick up to meet his, he looks concerned.

“Stephanie,” he says lowly, worriedly, “are you sick? Hurt? I have a first-aid kit in my car, if you need it.”

The unabridged concern for her he’s displaying almost makes her cry right there in the Starbucks. She doesn’t, but it’s a near thing. Instead, she straightens up, and mirrors him, placing both her elbows on the ends of the faux-leather chair, smiling as genuinely as she can. “Nope, I’m good. Promise. Hey, what is that, casework? Need any help?”

He half-smiles at her, but the worry is still there. “Nah. I’m just working on some plans for the kids’ gymnastics class I’m teaching. You’re welcome to take a look, though, make sure I’m not making it too advanced for them.” 

“Well, if you  _ insist _ ,” she says theatrically, rolling her wrist in an elaborate pantomime for one of the files. He hands it over with a grin.

As he resumes typing on his laptop, Steph curls up more comfortably on the seat and takes little sips of her coffee. The paper in her hand is fresh off the printer; each sheet in the folder detailing a different set of exercises alongside notes in Dick’s cramped handwriting on each child in the class in blue ballpoint - strengths, weaknesses, improvements, ideas. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him work industriously, only stopping to take a shallow sip of the coffee or to consult a file before returning to his computer. His hair - cropped at the back, long on top - still falls into his eyes like it used to when he was Batman, the same way he still tears at his lips when he works, but something about him is different. 

“Was it worth it?”

He looks up in surprise. “Was what worth it?” His eyes are bluer than before, she notes, near-cyan in the golden afternoon light. Bluer than when he used to be Batman. The lines around his mouth and the creases indenting themselves around his eyes are only a superimposition of Steph’s old memories on his relatively young face. 

“Moving away. From, uh, Gotham.” She places the file gently down, pressing her fingertips down on the cover of the folder, her nails leaving little indentations on the smooth beige surface. “Was it a fresh start, or did you just want to see somewhere new, or, uh. Sorry- I don’t mean to, uh, pry, I-” she can hear the false cheer in her voice slip away slowly, become almost too-quiet to be heard above the hustle and bustle in the coffee shop.

Dick looks at her carefully, his gaze measured and calculating, but not unkind. He picks up his coffee cup, and takes a long, thoughtful sip. “Moving away from Gotham was less of a choice and more of a...necessity, when it happened.”

Steph watches him trace the rim of his coffee cup. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” he heaves an enormous sigh, something tired and trampled unfurling beneath the perfect veneer, and Steph’s not imagining the lines on his forehead, now, “Bruce fired me, as he did all of us, and I couldn’t stay. So I left. Put on the v-neck, and became who I became. It was a fresh start, but it was mostly out of my hands. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any of it until it happened, honest.”

He looks so very, very tired all of a sudden, and Stephanie realises just how much it must hurt to come back to Gotham all the time for the people that he’s bound himself to as family through a father-figure that destroyed their relationship when he was still just a kid.

“You look better now,” she blurts out, biting down on her lip. He looks faintly amused. “I mean - the independence. It suits you.”

“You’re comparing me to when I was back in the suit, right?” his smile makes his eyes crinkle at the edges, like he’s caught her playing a children’s game that he wants in on. It’s a sign of genuine happiness, and her shoulders relax, just by a little. “Contrary to popular belief, I can actually live without constant human contact. I just have...a higher tolerance for co-operation than Bruce, and a tendency to be open with my affection rather than close it off. To hear it from Jason or Damian, I’m a hug-obessed freak.”

Stephanie giggles. 

Then his eyes turn serious. “I was a different person in that thing. I hate it, Stephanie. I hate who I become in the shadow of it.” 

She remembers. She was there. 

He takes another long sip. The coffee is still hot. She can see the way he recoils ever-so-slightly when the liquid hits his tongue, but she watches him carefully because she can feel him working up to saying something big. The coffee is a stalling technique, a common trait shared by all the boys. 

“Still not an excuse for discounting you as a Batgirl, though,” he says, brows furrowed, “it was stupid and short-sighted of me. You’re capable as hell, and have always been one of the most resilient members of this team. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry if I haven’t apologised for this properly before.” His gaze is steady and sincere, and too much for Stephanie to handle. 

She looks away, mumbles, voice small, “‘s okay. You weren’t that bad. Better than the other guy, ‘nyway.” 

He shakes his head slowly. “You deserved better, Steph. I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”

They sit in silence for a while, Steph curling up further into her chair, hands knitted around her drink, watching the passers-by outside speedwalk in normal big-city fashion. Someone’s late for a shift, and someone’s running to catch a bus, and someone else just got fired and someone just got hired. The constant movement and rush is something she’ll definitely miss.

“Are you thinking of leaving?”

His voice jolts her out of her thoughts and when she turns slowly to look at him, a sheepish, hideously fake grin spreading across her face. He’s radiating concern and sincerity again, and it makes Steph want to bare her teeth and swear at him, growl biting words and phrases that’ll make him back out of her life forever, never ask her anything again. 

Instead, she swallows her fear and her anxiety, drops her smile, and just says simply, ever so hesitantly: “Don’t tell anyone.” The pounding of her heart crashes in her ears like the thundering of a tsunami, preparing to throw itself against the coastline in a display of unrelenting strength.

Dick looks at her like he’s searching for something, trying to commit her face to memory, laser-etching every last imperfection of her face onto the grey matter of his brain. He nods, apparently satisfied with whatever he’s found. 

“You have my word.” He reaches out the coffee cup, gesturing for Steph to knock hers against his. The wave crashes to shore, the white surf breaking against the rocks.

“To fresh starts,” he says, “may your life work out exactly like you want it to.”

-

Her parents’ room is the hardest to pack away.

Most of Crystal’s things amount to folders of Mothers’ Day cards and photo albums from when Steph had been a child, preserved in all their yellowing glory. The folders shed glitter on the floor as she looks through them, picking through a seemingly-endless ocean of bright yellow and pink construction paper and crayon drawings of bright smiling suns and even brighter rainbows. The sharp laminate corners of the albums prick her fingers as she gently turns the pages to see a younger, brighter version of her smile up at her without a care in the world, held close by her mother. The photos are low-resolution, high-contrast; taken with ancient digital cameras that dyed everything in shades of sepia and dark blue. 

She tucks the folders and albums into a box filled with Crystal’s clothes, takes down the hangers in the closet and pairs the shoes into bags. She cleans out her mother’s drugstore makeup, sorting expired and non-expired lipsticks and face powders into a little pile, and nicks an extra bottle of perfume to take with her when she leaves; and then the boxes are packed and ready to be sent to her mother’s friend’s apartment, to be stored there until Crystal moves out of rehab and decides what to do next.

Then she takes a deep breath.

Arthur Brown’s things are still stacked neatly in her parents’ shared closet; his clothes still smell like him, like the cheap cologne he used to buy in bulk and wear every damn day. Behind the clothes are notebooks filled with schemes and plots, all scribbled in cheap, scratchy pencil. The open door to his things stays unmoving, mocking her inaction. She can hear her father’s voice laughing at her for being unable to even get rid of him properly, and it ignites the anger buried in her bones with a startling intensity, like a spark to gunpowder. 

Steph swallows her anger and sets them aside. She’ll figure it out later.

-

Her bedroom window slides open and a figure slinks through the opening.

Stephanie doesn’t turn around from where she’s kneeled on the ground in the dark room; she just keeps her focus on the box she’s taping shut. “Hey, Cass.”

She rips the brown packing tape open with an unholy screech and the smell of plastic and packaging filling the air. Cass recoils slightly at the sound and Steph smooths out the tape with the flat of her hand, her thumb creasing out any air bubbles trapped under the adhesive.

“Have not been patrolling,” says Cass quietly in the ensuing silence.

Stephanie takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” she says, turning to stand, dusting her hands off on her sweatpants, “I’ve been a little busy.” She gestures at the bed. “Please, sit. Want something to drink? I think I have a couple of Cokes in the fridge, if you’re in the mood.” 

Cass lowers herself onto the bed, and tugs her mask off. Her hair is glossy in the moonlight streaming in from the open window. The way it bounces makes Steph think of black silk and deep, dark oceans at midnight. Cass’s hands have her mask in a death-grip, still as death in her lap. Her brow is creased in worry, and her mouth is set in a pout. 

Her eyes flick to the spot in front of her, then back at Steph; a silent invitation to come join her. So Steph folds gracelessly like a house of cards, slouching warily in front of her, perched on her two-week-old sheets that she hasn’t had time to change in the run-and-go routine of her life at the moment. 

Cass’s eyes flit from spot to spot, taking in her bare walls, her empty shelves, the blank ceiling, devoid of stars and the way her stuff has been crammed into small, manageable boxes marked  _ keep?  _ and  _ throw. _ and she says, slowly, mournfully, “You are...leaving.” Her voice is small, but resigned, and in the near-empty room it sounds like fate being spoken into fact.

She can’t bring herself to look Cass in the eyes. “Yeah,” she says, her voice equally small, “I guess I am.”

A tear drips onto Steph’s bed, and Cass’s gloved hands dart forward to thread her fingers with Stephanie’s. “Why?” she asks, the word broken and sad and so simply put. “Why...would you leave?”

She’s not sure how to answer, for a moment. Cass matches their palms together, skin against leather, and their hands fit so perfectly that Stephanie takes a second to imagine a softer universe where their hands never unlink, and she stays and this conversation ends with them on a rooftop, stealing each others’ food and laughing the night away. Instead, she takes another deep breath, and the fantasy falls apart. She brings her blue eyes up to meet Cass’s beautiful dark brown ones, and hers are still full of tears that Steph itches to reach up and wipe away because she detests that she’s the one making Cass feel like this, but it’s now or never.

“I’m...not wanted here,” she says. 

Their hands fall apart and Cass doesn’t say anything, but the shock and betrayal and sheer heartbreak on her face speak volumes. Steph’s teeth grind together in a valiant effort to stop those treacherous tears from falling down her face. She tears at a shallow scab on her left hand, stopped when gloved fingers snake out and snatch her wrist.

“I want you,” Cass pleads, and Steph swallows hard. The moonlight catches on moisture in her eyes, and it’s a bitter sting that bites her in the throat when she notices.

She gently eases off Cass’s hand. “Have you ever-” she stops, a frog in her throat screaming with every word. “Have you ever- looked for something, that something that you’ve always been missing, and then been slapped in the face with the realisation that you can never have it?” The words that fall out of her mouth are unplanned. She’d never trusted herself to fully vocalise the reasons for her departure; she’d been too scared that she’d talk herself out of it. But as she says them to Cassandra now, she realises that the things she’s admitting are the words and feelings that have been scratched into her soul since she was old enough to understand how the world worked. 

Her voice doesn’t waver. “I can’t stay here any longer. The things I want- I’ll never find them here. I don’t know if I’ll find them somewhere else, but it can’t hurt- can’t possibly- to try any more than hurts to stay, right?”

Cass doesn’t say anything for a while. Conversations with Cass are like that. They’re always filled with pauses; sometimes purposeful, sometimes born of circumstance. It’s not that there’s a communication barrier or a lack of understanding; she just wants her words to convey the weight that they carry for her. Stephanie took a while to figure that one out.

“You’ll be alone.” In the darkened room, it sounds like a threat.

Stephanie shrugs. “Better to be alone than unwanted.” Her voice is strong, bitter, like black tea. 

Cass’s shoulders come up defensively. She tilts her head, whispers, “Stay. _ Please _ ,” and Steph brings her hand up to cup the side of her face. She tucks her silk-soft hair behind her ear and wipes away the dried tear tracks on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers back,” I can’t.”

Cass gets up, and tugs on her mask. Before she leaves through the window, she turns for one last long look at Steph. The moonlight glints off the lenses in her cowl, and then she’s gone.

Steph gazes listlessly at the patch of light on her floorboards for a long while after that.

-

The door to the Clocktower buzzes and Steph gently pushes it open. 

Babs is on a call with Dinah when she enters, busy eating a sandwich at the same time. When she sees Steph, she hits mute and beckons her over. 

“Hey, Babs,” she says, coming to sit on the desk near her main monitor, “how goes it?”

Babs wobbles her hand, to say  _ so-so _ , still chewing. 

Steph grins. “Good to hear. Hey, you don’t mind if I stash this bag here, right? It’s nothing weird, I swear. Just an extra Spoiler costume.”

Babs waves her hand dismissively with a smile, and turns back to her conversation with Dinah, the green light of her monitors reflecting off her chrome frames. Stephanie keeps the smile plastered on her face carefully until she disappears into the darkened guest room that she crashes in sometimes. 

She opens the closet and at the very top there’s an empty space where no-one ever looks, and so she throws the bag up there because it’s too tall a shelf for her to reach without jumping. It takes a couple of jumps actually, to smack the bag until it’s resting securely on the shelf. 

It’s a lie of omission, she consoles herself, of omission, because her current and her back-up Spoiler suits are in this bag that she’s leaving behind for good. Lies of omission -  _ half-truths _ . Besides, she thinks, getting up to leave, Babs isn’t going to notice anyway. It doesn’t matter. 

Dinah’s still on call with her when Steph walks through Oracle’s main workspace and they’re laughing at something together. Steph doesn’t think Babs has ever properly laughed with her.

“Hey, Barbara?” she says, hand on the door handle, ready to leave. Babs turns around, russet eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“Thanks,” she says, sounding out the words carefully, “for...helping me be Batgirl.” She takes great care not to say _anything_ else.

Babs looks confused, and tips her head to the side, considering Steph. But before she can say anything, Stephanie blurts out a hurried “g’bye-” and leaves. As she makes her way down the stairs, she can hear Dinah’s voice float out behind her. “ _ What was that all about? _ ”

_ Lies of omission,  _ she tells herself. It’s better in the long run that they don’t know.

-

She lands gently on the roof of the Wayne Enterprises building.

It’s seventy stories tall, a shimmering skyscraper designed to assuage the guilt of those within it by tricking them into believing that Gotham is a shining, bustling metropolis, hiding the filth and the poverty beneath a spiderweb of glittering streetlights and buzzing cars.

Steph leans back on her palms as she sits on the edge of the rooftop, surveying her hometown from the best vantage point it had to offer. She peels back her hood, the humid summer breeze is cold as it whips through her blond hair, and it makes her feel like she’s standing under freezing rain. She can feel the wind on her skin through the thin fabric of her costume; the oldest iteration of her suit doesn’t do much to keep out the cold.

She’s up there for two hours, lost in the rhythm that’s ever-present in the background of the cityscape before she hears a person land behind her, their tread heavy only for the intention of announcing their presence. She doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t do anything except breathe in deeply. Her lungs fill all the way, down into every last alveolus at the end of every bronchiole. She can feel the satisfaction that brings crawl up every vein, and it fills her with the courage to say the things that come next.

“Batman.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the sound of several steps forward on her left. 

“Spoiler.”

Somewhere in the back of Steph’s mind, piano chords for some especially melancholy pop song start playing. She can’t place the song, not the name nor the tune; but it fits the moment spectacularly.

“You left your normal patrol route. Are you injured.” His questions are straightforward, cutting to the heart of the matter with all the precision of a chainsaw. She doesn’t turn her head.

“What, a girl can’t enjoy the view of the city she’s spent protecting for the last five years?” She reaches up to her ear to make sure her comm is muted, because the words that will spill from her lips in the next minutes are meant for him and for him alone. She knows his comm is muted, because they’ve been on patrol for hours now and there hasn’t been a single shout of pain from a criminal, or a grunt of frustration at a missed punch from him, or a huff of amusement elicited at Robin and Nightwing’s back-and-forth that he pretends to hate.

She takes another deep breath, her eyes searching the horizon. “I’m sorry.”

A beat. Then:

“What.”

Her shoulders shake, a manifestation of the physical effort it takes her to form the thoughts and vocalise them.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the war. I’m sorry for dying-or not really dying.”

Her voice lacks any emotion, drier than the summer she’d spent with Leslie in Africa.

“I’m sorry,” Steph sighs, “for making you think you needed to take Batgirl from Cass and give it to me. I’m sorry for thinking I could be a good enough Robin- that you actually wanted me as a partner at all, really.” There’s no blame in her voice. The song plays on in her mind, every note a different pale neon shade blooming in the darkness, every word another step towards brighter skies.

“Spoiler-”

“I’m sorry-I’m sorry I dated your son, even if he wasn’t your son at the time. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you told me to go home all those years ago; and I’m sorry I forced my way into this life.  _ Your _ life.” The freedom from all those years of being guilty of so much is so close she can taste it. Her voice doesn’t waver, her eyes do not move from where they’re fixed onto in the distance. The song crescendos; she draws one last deep breath. It smells like an oncoming storm, and the promise of something better. 

“I’m sorry for not being good enough. I’m sorry for asking so much of you - you’re not my dad. You shouldn’t have had to step in. You don’t owe me anything; you shouldn’t have been beholden to be the person he wasn’t. So,” and this is when she turns to look directly at him, and she hopes he can see her eyes smiling, “I’m  _ sorry _ .”

She gets up, shoots her grapple and pulls it firm, all one fluid motion, the cheap fabric of her cape fluttering around her. The song ends here. “Thank you,” she whispers emphatically. “See you around, Batman.” 

The last thing she hears before she swings away is the swish of kevlar and the fragmented sound of her name shouted, bitten off by the wind.

-

Steph burns the suit.

She takes her father’s things - every last notebook, every plan, every scheme, every scrap of fabric - she dumps it in one huge pile. The Spoiler suit is purple amongst a sea of white and orange and black, and Steph plugs her nose as she pours her dad’s cheap cologne over all of it. 

Then she tosses the match.

The rising smoke smells sickly-sweet as it drifts off into the red night sky, and the fire burns with all the rage that Steph has felt burn within her every day and every night, and as she watches the ash float away on the breeze her heart grows lighter 

Steph burns it all. And then she walks away, the only trace she leaves behind is a pile of soot and some scorch marks on a rickety Narrows building where no one would even think to look twice. 

Come morning, she’ll do the same thing. Her walls have been stripped, her furniture’s been sold. She’ll leave the keys under the doormat and the lady who bought it will move in soon, and the last remnants of Steph’s life here will be wiped away without a trace, the floorboards wiped of her footsteps and the bathroom no longer smelling like her shampoo. 

Come morning, she’ll be gone. 

-

_ Giving up is not a crime _ , croons the stereo.

The road stretches out in front of her, wide and open and empty. The sky above her is wide open, a bleach-blue expanse spattered with clouds so thick that Steph wishes she could fly up there and take a nap in them. It’s a heart-achingly picture-perfect day, the kind she wants to live in forever.

_ Moving on, when it’s time. _

Her windows are rolled half-way down, and the sun warms her skin as the wind stings her cheeks, whipping through her hair and for the first time in a long, long time, she feels truly free. The engine thrums steadily under her hands and she drums her fingers to the sound of the beat. Adrenaline rushes through her veins, making laughter bubble up through her mouth and it’s a free, delighted sound, thrown away into the rushing air.

_ Brush it off, brush it off, brush it off, brush it away _ ,

She hasn’t felt this alive since the first time she landed a hit on a crook as Spoiler. Nothing has been this exhilarating since she first discovered what true freedom felt like, and she knows, now, that she’s rediscovered it - something bright and weightless, the feeling of having nothing ahead of her but blank pages to write the story yet to come. A chance to change her life once more.

_ Laugh it all, laugh it all, laugh it all, laugh it away- _

‘Cause all her heroes now are half her age.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like there's more to be written here. maybe I'll write it someday. who knows
> 
> *title and lyrics taken from Half Your Age - Joywave
> 
> [🌠my tumblr✨](https://lifetimeoflaughter.tumblr.com/)


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